Salt Lake Tribune Review
The story of Dieter Dengler, a U.S. Navy fighter pilot who escaped from a Vietnam War-era prison camp in Laos, has long fascinated filmmaker
Werner Herzog. Lucky for us.
Herzog first chronicled the German-born Dengler's wartime ordeal in a 1997 documentary, "Little Dieter Needs to Fly." Now he tackles it again with "Rescue Dawn," a powerful dramatization that brings the story of Dengler's capture, imprisonment and escape to a wider audience. Under Herzog's assured direction, "Rescue Dawn" is a taut, gripping wartime adventure, propelled by strong performances by
Christian Bale and a surprising
Steve Zahn.
As the movie opens in 1965, Dengler (Bale) and his fellow pilots are on an aircraft carrier in Southeast Asia, poking fun at a bad military training film about jungle warfare. Their banter belies the dire fate that soon awaits Dengler in Laos, after his jet is shot down and he crash-lands in a field.
Miraculously unhurt, Dengler is soon caught by the Pathet Lao, Laotian communist troops sympathetic to the Viet Cong. When he refuses to sign a document renouncing American foreign policy, he is dragged behind a cow, nearly drowned in a well and taken to a small Laotian prison camp in a jungle wilderness.
There he finds three Thai prisoners and two American soldiers who've already been imprisoned for two years. Duane (Zahn) and Gene (
Jeremy Davies) are hollow-eyed, emaciated and nearly broken in spirit. Almost immediately Dengler begins planning to escape, an audacious notion that Duane and Gene are almost too far gone to grasp.
Known for his intense work in dark films, Bale is excellent as the charismatic, playful Dengler, whose blithe attitude fades as he grasps the desperateness of his situation. Davies, with his Christlike hair and torso of skin and bones, is equally vivid as the delusional Gene, who clings to the notion that the war will end soon and they'll be released.
Zahn, the comic sidekick in such breezy films as "Happy, Texas" and "That Thing You Do!", is nothing short of a revelation. His Duane has the haunted eyes, slumped body language and childlike mumble of a defeated man. Dengler's arrival stirs a glimmer of hope within him that's heartbreaking.
Herzog avoids wartime context or politics to keep this visceral film focused on Dengler, who represents can-do American optimism under tremendous strain. Even escape from the prison camp brings little relief, as he and Duane face starvation, river rapids and dangerous villagers in their arduous trek towards the Thai border. At one point they toss their stolen but useless rifles into a river, an act that might be symbolic if it weren't simply practical. By "Rescue Dawn's" end their noble wartime ambitions, like those of the American military in Vietnam, have been reduced to a primal fight for survival.
- Brandon Griggs
The rundown: Christian Bale plays a Navy pilot caught in a Laotian P.O.W. camp, in this gripping and fact-based wartime adventure by filmmaker
Werner Herzog. 126 minutes. (B.G.)
Synopsis: Dieter Dengler dreamed of flying since his childhood in wartime Germany, which is why he volunteered to become a Navy pilot after his family moved to America. The only place he ever wanted to be was in the sky, but now, on his very first top-secret mission over Laos, his plane is shot down to earth. Trapped in an impassable jungle far from U.S. control, Dengler is soon captured by notoriously dangerous Pathet Lao soldiers. Though he quickly realizes he is in the most terrifying and vulnerable of circumstances, he refuses to give an inch. After a shocking initial ordeal, he is taken to a small Laotian prison camp, where he meets two American soldiers already held captive for a stultifying two years--both nearly broken in spirit. Duane can only recommend keeping quiet to stay alive, while the barely sane "Gene from Eugene" insists they are all about to be released any minute now. But Dengler has no intention of sticking around the nightmarish camp, so he begins to dream up an escape plan that takes his fellow prisoners by surprise with its savvy and audacity. Dengler doesn't even know where he is--but he knows with unwavering certainty that he must not stop fighting for his life. As he makes his way into the jungle, his journey will never let up, as it takes him from the bonds of fraternity to the brink of despair, to one of the most remarkable rescues in modern history.
